If we’re taking a diversion, I hope to collect a new species of Australian cicada - one that would dwarf our current largest. I’ll keep you posted, but you’ll have to wait some months

P.S. Reality cannot be gauged in amounts, but rather guessed at using probability.

kittenz:
Ooh, sweet! That’s the same species name as the Jurassic pliosaur, Liopleurodon ferox!

As a matter of fact, small genets have been kept as mousers for centuries in regions where they are native. Even the ancient Romans often kept genets as pets.

Here is a link to the WWF’s page with the first photo above, plus another clear photo of the same animal from behind.

Fossas are considered by most to be viverrids, but until fairly recently they were thought to be a primitive member of the cat family. Certainly they must bear a very close resemblance to the animals that were the common ancestors of cats & viverrids.

Here is a link to a page which shows fossas and other rare wildlife of Madagascar, which, like Borneo, is a huge island with unique fauna.

If you check out the excellent reference book Wild Cats of the World by Mel & Fiona Sunquist, there is an outstanding article on the Bornean Bay Cat that has pictures much more like this mystery animal than the pictures that come up in, say, a Google search, including the first photo ever taken of one. It was a female that had been held captive by villagers, up to the point of near death, and although she was extremely emaciated and died soon after, she seems to be more representative of the species than some pictures I have seen. In fact, some of the pictures of “Bay Cats” are actually photos of Asian Golden Cats, which are related to the Bay Cat.

Here is a link to an excerpt from the book on Amazon.com.

The photo is also reproduced in color in one of the color plates sections of the book.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in cats. Much of the material covered is not readily available anywhere else, and it is fascinating.

However - it got me thinking further - how about eye-shine? Surely someone has thought about this? (Perhaps it was mentioned in the earlier thread?) Eye-shine is often a diagnostic feature of animals.

I did find a striped civet photo showing eye-shine of nearly identical colour.

Searching for Hose’s Palm Civet online, yields at least two actual photos (one of which shows the same eyeshine colour). My question is - if this is supposed to be extinct, then how come at least two people are publishing modern-day photos of it? The second photo of Hose’s Palm Civet is only available in Google’s cache, however, and seems to be from the same series depicted here.

Even travel guides indicate likely locations for rare sightings of Hose’s civet.

Lastly, I don’t think the mystery animal is a Hose’s Palm civet. Compare the two eye-shine photos in this article. Note the distance between the eyes in proportion to the distance between the ears. Our mystery animal has more widely spaced eyes (relative to the ears) than Hose’s palm civet.

The mystery animal may be a new civet.

The Bay Cat on this page also has eyes more closely set together than the mystery animal - although its colouration also does not match the mystery cryptid, nor other photos of Bay cats.

Fluffy tails and colouration might be accounted for by differences in individuals, but distance between eyes and ears I would expect to be consistent for mammals such as cats and civets.

I don’t think this one matches either of those suggestions, but may be a new civet.